I've gone to a few sites where I could just buy one already together, but I'm going to guess I could save some money if I were to put the parts together myself. However I'm no good at putting them together (as in what parts to get, I know how to put the parts together), just using them

So some starting info, and hopefully someones can help me here and maybe in the next week or so I can have me a shweet desktop. It will be used mainly for gaming. I like playing games at max setting. The current game I've been playing is SW:TOR (at low settings q.q). I'd also like to down the road be able to watch 3D movies off it (I'll get a monitor later), so I know I'd need a blu-ray player (heck why not get a burner type) and a 3D Graphic Card.

When it comes to what motherboard and all the other stuff that is needed, I'm at a lost.

1,500$ be enough? have a bit more, but most sites I've been looking at start around 1k for what look like good set ups.

$1,500 should be plenty for putting together a high end gaming rig. You have two main options at the moment if you go with intel. The new, latest and greatest top of the line Socket 2011 processors are now available, which said processors currently start at $600, or there is the tried and true socket 1366 processors, which are cheaper. There are also the socket 1155, etc processors, but for a gaming rig, you want the extra ram slots. I'll put together two options for you, one for Socket 1366, and one for socket 2011. I tend to use newegg for these lists just because they have decent prices and easy to link URL's, but you may very well be able to find some of these components cheaper.

Hard drive: Western digital 500GB 7200 rpm $129 And yes, hard drive prices have gone through the roof at the moment. A decent sized SSD will cost you $300, you may also want to pick up 2 1-2TB drives and run them as a secondary backup data drive in a raid 1 mirror array (if one drive fails, the other drive has all the data on it, a little slower than just one drive, but redundancy is good for backups) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795

So thats $1456 without the video card or the Operating system. A new OEM copy of windows 7 runs $100 if you need it. A good mid-upper end video card is going to start at $199 for a Nvidia 560 GTX, which would put you at about $1650 The CPU just eats all the budget there. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130661

A Socket 1366 build gives us a bit more room to play with other components.

Thats $1355 with the secondary drive array and no video card, With a SSD you will definitly need the space. Could go with a single data drive, but then you have the whole drive failure risk thing. A Solid State drive is definitly worth it, i'm running a 256GB one in my machine right now, nothing but good things to say about it.

Video cards, you could go with that 560 GTX for $200 and put you right at $1555, or more than one of them. The next step up would be a 580 GTX. They start at $500. You could also drop two of the ram sticks for now and add them in later as budget permits. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130587

The case I have listed there is about the best all around inexpensive large case with drive rails and toolless construction. Its a good case, and usually less expensive than others in its class. That being said, your case is the one piece of your computer you will have longer than anything else, so it does make sense to get a good one that you like, even if it costs a bit more. You may also want to take a look at some of the other cases out there, such as the Haf X, or the Thermaltake Speedo advanced, or some of the Antec cases and see what you like. Performance-pcs.com is also a good place to take a look at what is out there for cases

That SSD would also work well in the socket 2011 build, I just couldn't fit it in the budget there. If you do go with that build, you'll want to get at least all 4 ram channels populated eventually, as it will be a slight performance bottleneck. Then again with that much horsepower to begin with, thats like saying a bicycle parked on the side of a 16 lane highway causes a slight bottleneck...

Well, I can't believe I'm about to post this, because I like to stop by this section of Zam with a sponge to soak up some of Koa's excess brain goo. I've been thinking about whether or not to mention this since it was posted. Him, and a few others here, are the ones that that inspired me to look into this kind of thing in the first place. But there are a few things I'm not understand why you picked them for a gaming rig. So if I'm misinformed about anything here please let me know. And I know those were recommendations for a top end gaming rig, but I think there's a couple places were you could get better performance, for gaming (in that price area), if you changed it up a little.

The processor, ram, and because of those the motherboard.

Now from what I understand there's no game that can utilise hyperthreading. If you plan on doing other things with it too then it is a very worth while investment (video editing, heavy photoshopping, CAD, or even if you like to run foldit@home in the background). If your main focus is gaming then I thought it would be a better investment to go with a i5-series (they're pretty much the i7 series without hyperthreading, right?). Something like the i5-2500 or i5-2500k (the k on the end tells you it's potential for overclocking). Those would be the the socket 1155 processors that Kao mention earlier. That socket processor would not only be less expensive than the 2011 socket but it would have better upgrade potential than the socket socket 1366 processor because the next generation Intel sockets will be on the 1155 socket as well ('ivy bridge'). They should perform the same (for gaming) because they are the same speed minus the hyperthreading. Once again, I haven't heard of a game that can use hyperthreading at all. (Am I wrong about that?)

As far as the ram goes. I don't know of game, by itself that will exceed 4gb. I would go with 8gb right now because its cheap, and for most mother boards, that you’d be looking at in that price range, would have 4 slots of duel channel ram. Meaning you could get two sticks of of 4gb ram and still have more room later to upgrade. I don't know what you run in the background while gaming, but 8gb plenty be fine and 16gb right now is a bit overkill (for gaming). Unless you have a billion things running in the background. I don't think I've ever gone over 4gb while gaming and having a few browser tabs open music/ movie going. Most of the boards I've seen in that category will support up to 64gb ram. Though 8gb ram sticks are a little more pricey right now. (Once again have I been ill informed?)

Basically the only reason I would change the motherboards to something different is because of the socket type of the CPU and the amount of ram I thought would be necessary. Would you want to go all out and have the option to go quad-crossfire or 3-way SLI in the future?

The main reason I bring these things up is because you could save a little cash and have the same performance as with the other options, and with that money invest in a better video card/ bigger SSD drive. Which I thought would net you better performance (for gaming) than upgrading to a processor with hyperthreading. Plus have options for upgrading later on. I thought it would be better, especially for a first time builder, to go with as high end video card as possible, right now, and down the road have the option to SLI/ Crossfire if you want too. Radeon just released their 7000 series video cards (brand new line). Nvidia will be having there's out later this year, from what I've heard.

So have I got it all wrong?

edit to add: And now I run away back to the shadows because Kao scares me sometimes. (He's too smart!) plus he has an orbital death laser! I'll be looking up all day now.

Edited, Jan 10th 2012 12:01pm by JKenner Edit again: Sorry, I was thinking socket 1356 when writing about the socket 1366. The 2011 socket is the updated version of of the 1366. Where as the 1355 socket is the updated version of the 1356. But I think that doesn't change main point I was trying to go for. Does it?

As far as hyperthreading goes, it's a virtual core that basically allows your processor to allocate unused resources to another process. Any game that supports multithreading will most likely get a performance boost on a system that is hyperthreading capable. It's not huge, on the I7's it ends up being about a 35% boost in overall processing power versus the same CPU with hyperthreading disabled under most benchmarking programs. For newer directX 10 , directX 11 games you will most definitly see some improved performance, though it becomes a cost benifit tradeoff at that point. Specifically, World of Warcraft, Everquest II, all the FFXI derivitives, and most FPS type games will benifit from hyperthreading.

For the CPU socket, there are other considerations. Yes, socket 1155 is a newer chipset revision than Socket 1366, but it's really their mid range offering. Socket 2011 was supposed to be released much earlier than it actually ended up being. There are a few chipset instruction things that give socket 1155 an edge over Socket 1366 in some areas, but what really gives socket 1366 an edge over 1155 for gaming, is the third ram channel. It's not the quantity of ram so much as the number of available allocation channels that makes 1366 the better choice in that price range in my oppinion. The 1366 cards also have a larger PCI express pipeline, so if multiple high end video cards are a possibility in a system in the future, they would perform better overall on a socket 1366 motherboard, all other things being equil. Socket 1155 and 1156 both have 2 ram channels, which limit performance on the upper tier processors. The I-5's are indeed the I-7's without hyperthreading, and for a mid-upper range gaming rig on a budget, they are a good choice.

8GB ram sticks are a little on the pricey side at the moment, but the 4GB ones are dirt cheap, $22 for 4GB of the good stuff is not bad at all.

My philosophy on building tends to be "build the highest end core components, everything else is upgradeable". You definitly aren't wrong that there are different approaches to building a performance machine. For someone who enjoys running games on full settings without lag, I'd probably reccommend my approach. But again, thats my oppinion.

For video cards, first off, I never reccommend ATI cards. yes, they are cheaper, yes they are sometimes faster than Nvidia, but their drivers are horrible. Buggy, difficult to install on occasion, a pain in the *** to reinstall or upgrade to a different card. Always have been, and unless someone specifically asks me for a reccommendation on one, I'll always tend to reccommend nvidia. The 560 GTX is actually a very fast card, and there isn't that much difference between the 580 and the 560 in terms of perforamance, especially when you factor in all that extra ram on the card and the fact that you could put two of them in SLI in the computer for the price of one 580 GTX and exceed the performance of the single 580 in most cases by a considerable margin. Going with a top end video card out of the box with a mid-upper end motherboard and processor combo can mean you get a little less life out of the board when you go to upgrade a few years down the line. Bumping the core components up a few levels can extend their usable lifespan and maybe let you get away with upgrading to a faster video card and deferring the next core upgrade for another year.

personally if you are looking at buying a gaming rig and aren't getting a leptop Ibuypower.com has great competitively priced pc's they range from 600 to some that blow the bank away. Alot of them have fluid cooling etc or that option and they allow you to change components to what you want, just in case you want to look at that option.